Monday, November 23, 2009

Doing It Yourself

Let's be honest. In Dental School, you end up doing a lot of ticky tack tasks that no practicing dentist would ever do. For example, setting up the operatory is a time consuming task, and let's not even get into cleaning up afterwards. I probably spend a good hour out of ever day setting-up and cleaning up, and this is only for TWO patients.

The obvious aside, what about lab work? Most general dentists aren't mounting every case on the articulator or waxing up crowns. I don't know many that even set the denture teeth either - yet we do it as students. I'm glad we do, because you need to know what good is.

Now the point I'm getting at is that it becomes quite easy to get lazy and complacent. Simply assume the lab can do everything. This is ok sometimes, but every now and again we get a situation that requires some improvisation.

So here is my case. I get a patient on public aid that simply can't afford the partial she desperately needs (missing 7-10). She eventually plans on getting the partial but needs more time to save up.

Clearly that is a space that most people would like to have filled up ASAP. So at the college, we require that the patient's balance be UNDER 100$ before we send anything out to the lab. As soon as I prep rest seats, the partial will be charged (and it costs 600$). She needs other work as well that is not covered so we are looking at a couple months before I even start the partial.

So our options:1) Do nothing, let this lady walk around like this trying to get a job2) Send to the lab for an interim partial3) Make the temp myself (flipper)

I had attempted to make a flipper last summer and while I thought it went pretty terribly, the patient never came back (which is actually a complement in this case).

So the flipper is generally made to replace ONE, count em' ONE tooth. If I send to the lab, it will cost her about 300. If I make it, it costs 160. Given financial limitations and my desire to learn - I decided to get a little crazy and attempt to replace the 4 most esthetically important teeth in the entire mouth.

Here it is after about an hour of work and one helluva a time getting it off the cast. She has all of her posterior teeth, so I decided to go without wires.

Now I will be the first to admit that the gingival shade sucks. In my defense, that is really the only color we have to work with in the lab. This is also supposed to be TEMPORARY. I needed to bring the acrylic buccally for a little extra retention. I would not have been comfortable attempting to have those teeth blend into the natural gum line. Again though, considering I couldn't even fix a toilet prior to dental school, I was pretty damn happy with this result. It looks even better far away.

Her voice didn't change at all after a few adjustments but she does use just a touch of denture adhesive. I probably could have used some wires but I used them last time and wanted to try one without.

This post is not to toot my own horn but rather to emphasize how much you can change someone's life by taking the route less traveled. I will never become a prosthodontist, but I would like to think I can help when the easy lab option is not possible. I delivered this thing in september and it is still holding out great. She is interviewing for jobs now and we will hopefully get her partial going early next semester.

With all that said, making your own temps is pretty time consuming. We were never taught this in the pre-clinic so you end up with a little trial and error. With that said, this result completely trumps my first attempt (which I wish I had pictures of) and was quite honestly, a far more difficult case.

Will I be making my own interim partials all the time? Of course not, but it feels good to know I can should the need the arise.